Tasmania’s Health Minister Lara Giddings has apologised to a sexual assault victim who was sent home from the Launceston General Hospital (LGH) this week because no-one was available to conduct a forensic examination.

Investigations into the incident are continuing.

A sexual assault victim went to the Launceston General Hospital on Monday night for a forensic examination but after waiting several hours was told to go home because there was no-one available qualified to do the test.

Natalie Heiniger, the committee president of northern sexual assault support group Laurel House, says it is not good enough.

“It can be a distressing procedure so to actually choose to go down that road is a big choice so mentally to prepare yourself for that and then not have it happen, pretty much an emotional rollercoaster,” she said.

Laurel House is calling for more funding so the LGH can ensure a qualified forensic examiner is available 24 hours, seven days a week.

The Health Minister Lara Giddings has apologised to the victim in parliament this morning.

Govt pledges $50m to mental health

Ms Roxon has also unveiled the make-up of a new national advisory group on mental health, to be led by former head of the Mental Health Council, John Mendoza.

Ms Roxon says the new council fulfils an election commitment.

“The advisory council is a mechanism to provide the Government with independent, balanced and confidential advice from a wide range of experts to inform national mental health reform efforts, and provide continuing impetus for reform,” she said.

Australia has managed to reduce the number of teenage suicides but the latest figures from the Institute of Health and Welfare show there is a new problem that needs to be tackled, self harm.

In the past decade there has been an alarming rise in the number of young people who intentionally hurt themselves, with more than 7,000 taken to hospital in one year.

Youth suicide has long been recognised as a real and significant issue in Australian society.

But Professor George Patton from the Centre for Adolescent Health says more commonly, deep emotional pain can manifest itself as self harm.

“The act is not necessarily about killing yourself and for most young people self harm is not about killing yourself, it’s a way of dealing with emotions that you’re finding difficult,” he said.

“They may be emotions of feeling anxious, feeling angry, feeling unhappy, a mixture of all of the above.”

The latest figures from the Institute of Health and Welfare, released this morning, reveal the rate of self harm is rising dramatically.

In the decade from 1996 to 2006, the rate of hospitalisations from self-harm went up by 43 per cent among young people.

For young women, the increase was even higher at 51 per cent.

The institute’s Deanna Eldridge says that equates to 7,300 young people in the most recent statistical year.

“Overall it only accounts for about 2 per cent of all hospitalisations of young people, but in terms of injury it’s about the sixth leading cause of hospitalisation.

The Institute’s figures show about 80 per cent of the hospitalisations for self-harm were for deliberate poisoning.

Professor Patton says that is a reflection of the most serious cases but it is really only the tip of the iceberg and most cases of self-harm do not need immediate medical attention.

“The commonest type of self harm the young people report is deliberately cutting themselves,” he said.

“Self poisoning is the next most common and then things like deliberate risk taking, beating up on yourself or self battery – they’re less common again.”

Self harm is most common during puberty and reaches a peak at an average age of 15.

It is a problem all around the world and the rise of cases in Australia fits with similar trends in other Western countries.

Professor Patten says there is a growing feeling that the rise in self harm is actually a reflection of the growth of individualism and loss of connections.

“They are really important for young people as they’re growing up and so kids are growing up feeling that they actually need to deal with their problems themselves,” he said.

Youth depression groups, like Reach Out! have helped make progress in bringing down the suicide rate but spokesman Jonathan Nicholas thinks the figures show there is still a lot of work to do.

“We’ve made some good inroads into suicide but the journey is far from over and it says that we’ve actually got to do more in intervening early with young people and getting them to the supports they need and making sure that they are not reaching the point where they want to die,” he said.

Located in the shadow of a power station two hours east of Melbourne, Traralgon is predominantly a working-class town. But it’s also home to Australia’s school neuroscience champion.

Last July, Quinn McGennisken from Lavalla Catholic College beat 750 year 10 and 11 students from around Australia and New Zealand to take the national Brain Bee title.

In the final, the then 16-year-old with a preference for humanity subjects beat a field of boys with a maths/science bent.

“There were a few misconceptions about me,” Quinn said.

“I have blonde hair and I’m a girl, so they used to put me down. So I thought, I’m going to do it just to prove them wrong.”

Quinn’s Mum runs a local takeaway store and her Dad operates mobile food vans. But her competitors came from more academic families.

“We understand that many of them were actually sons of doctors and they’d actually had special training at their local universities to assist them in this competition, whereas Quinn and I had just looked at diagrams in the textbook,” teacher Mara Bormanis said.

The Brain Bee required weeks of extracurricular study to progress through each of the three rounds which were run over several months.

“This competition is extremely tough. The subject matter is equivalent to second year medical student anatomy studies,” Ms Bormanis said.

But at the same time Ms McGennisken was displaying her intellectual brilliance, she was privately grappling with the mental torment of anorexia and depression.

“It’s like I’ve got two brains in my head, fighting against one another,” she said.

“So one’s sort of saying, ‘Don’t eat’ and the other is saying, ‘No, you do’ and ‘Be reasonable. This is normal’.”

Her illness began about four years ago after teasing at school. At her lowest point, Quinn ate only an apple a day, became physically ill and missed two to three days of school a week for a year.

“She just would go into her room and just curl up into a ball, and wouldn’t come out and talk,” mother Bronwyn McGennisken said.

It was particularly painful for Quinn’s grandmother, who lives with the family. Throughout her 82 years, Joan Kerr has suffered several bouts of depression which also afflicted her three siblings.

“It was very hard seeing Quinn like that. Just blaming myself I think – ‘Perhaps it’s my fault she’s like it’. It’s very hard,” she said.

Mrs Kerr says she tried to help, but didn’t think she made much of a difference.

But Quinn disagrees.

“I was helped by the fact that I’d seen her overcome bouts of depression,” she said.

With counselling and medication, Quinn began to recover and her experience triggered a passionate desire to learn about the brain.

“When you know there are actual chemical imbalances involved and the biological aspects of some of these illnesses and just those things that go on at the more nitty gritty level, you do understand your illness better,” she said.

Mrs McGennisken says she thinks it has given Quinn an objective and a purpose that’s not focused on her body self-image.

Quinn is now planning a career in the mental health field, and in preparation for the international Brain Bee, she won the rare opportunity of working experience at the Howard Florey Brain Research Institute in Melbourne.

Institute director Fred Mendelsohn says Quinn’s achievements are exceptional even for someone doing it under the very best conditions.

“To do it with those difficulties really compounds your admiration for what she’s achieved,” he said.

This weekend in Montreal, she’s aiming for the world title.

Win or lose, her family is just relieved she’s healthy and happy enough to attempt it.

“I’m just proud of her because whether she achieves or doesn’t achieve, it doesn’t matter. She’s a good person,” Mrs McGennisken said.

Health Dept says new northern mental health complex nearly finished

The Health Department has announced progress on building more housing in Tasmania’s north for people with mental illnesses, a month after concerns were raised about patients sleeping in backpacker hostels.

In March the parents of a psychiatric patient raised concerns that their son was sent to stay in tourist accommodation after being discharged from Launceston’s Ward 1E psychiatric unit.

The Health Department today said its $2m accommodation complex in the northern Launceston suburb of Rocherlea is on schedule to be finished in August.

The Northern Manager for Mental Health Services, Susan Crave, says the units will provide a home for people with mental illnesses, but won’t eliminate the need for other accommodation.

“I think they’re very separate issues,” she said.

“I think the backpacker issue, you know, is a totally different one.

“When we look at a range, we always have to look at a wide range of accommodation for the various clients that we’re seeking to accommodate.

“This facility is set up, the ten beds are for long-stay clients, so it’s up to 24 months,” said Ms Crave.

AMA anger over 2020 snub

Australian Medical Association (AMA) president Rosanna Capolingua has accused health bureaucrats of trying to drive down the standard of health care in Australia, after she was excluded from Kevin Rudd’s 2020 Summit.

The heads of other peak medical bodies will be attending but, despite putting her name forward, Dr Capolingua has not been listed among the 1,000 delegates to the summit next month.

Dr Capolingua says organisers may have been frightened of what the AMA has to say about the quality of patient care.

She says it remains to be seen what outcomes the summit will deliver.

“The feelings that I have from administrators and bureaucrats across the country, from the states, is that they are trying to push down the standards of medical care in this country, and we must prevent that from occurring,” she said.

“We must make sure that Australian patients receive the very best, and that our health outcomes improve.

“If the AMA was represented at the 2020 Summit we would make it very clear to all the other attendees that we have this concern about the standard of medical care being pushed down in Australia.

“We would be inviting others to understand what the agendas are, and resist.”

Dr Capolingua’s predecessor as AMA head, Mukesh Haikerwal, has been invited to the summit. Other attendees in the health section include former AFL footballer James Hird and Winter Olympics gold medalist Alisa Camplin.

Marketing influences antidepressant prescriptions: study

New research into marketing by pharmaceutical companies has found that doctors and psychiatrists are being influenced by the branding of antidepressant drugs.

Dr Steven Ward from Perth’s Murdoch University will publish research later this year which compares the chemical ingredients of antidepressants and the marketing of them to health professionals.

The research has found drugs which are well branded and marketed to health professionals are more commonly prescribed than similar, less marketed alternatives.

Dr Ward says GPs also rate drug company representatives as their second most important source of information on pharmaceuticals.

“We relied on looking at, was brand name that important or was it the actual drug, or the chemical differences in the drug that were the driving factor? We find that they’re equally important,” he said.

“That’s very surprising, regardless of medical training, I expected it to be less important, particularly for psychiatrists.”

He says the pharmaceutical industry spends $21,000 per Australian doctor each year marketing and branding drugs.

“With for example financial planners, there is a requirement to disclose any gifts, inducements etc,” he said.

“Here we have a group of people who are making important decisions and if there are any inducements and so on, there may be a role for some sort of transparency in that process.”

Australian Medical Association president, Rosanna Capolingua, has rejected the findings saying doctors prescribe the medication they believe will benefit the patient most.

“Often when a new drug is launched, information is distributed,” she said.

“You may see doctors using that new drug on a patient because it has new benefits.

“It may have better qualities than other medications and you’ll see that trend occur.”